Real Ip Addresses

[ChiangMaiThai]

As some of you already know, TSpeed from TT&T is cheap at 1000 baht a month and gives you (or at least me) speeds between 100k and 400k. But you don't get a real IP address so its useless for certain applications. Outside of Bangkok all the ISP's offering real IP addresses want 5 to 10 times the price of TSpeed for SLOWER speeds. So I'm assuming their only point of differentiaition is that they offer real IP's. Why is their such a premium for this and does anyone see a change on the horizon where DSL is available for a reasonable price with a real IP address?

[kenk3z]

There's not all that much incremental expense to an ISP when they add "private" IP addresses. They just make them up for their own internal network (namely, you). They still have to provide the bandwidth to service their customers, but they don't have to pay for or reserve a large block of "real" IP addresses.

It used to be some ten years ago (at least in the USA) that you could obtain your own Class C address block (consisting of 252 or so real IPs) simply by applying for it with the government authority. The availability of those blocks started to run out, and they could hardly be obtained, and when they were obtainable, it was from a big ISP at a fee. This is when most "consumer-oriented" ISPs started using "Network Address Translation" to save money.

So, when you need a "real" IP address, you cost the ISP more money. Plus, they know how much more desireable a "real" IP address is to many people, and so they can charge a premium for it.

Usually people who want a "real" IP address want to solicit some connection from the open Internet, such as for a web server or E-Mail server located in their home. This may or may not actually work, depending on whether the ISP also has a firewall policy that blocks this activity. So if you plan to buy a "real" IP address, don't forget to also ask if it comes to you with all or most ports open.

kenk3z

[rss]

I'm not sure what you want a "real IP" for. I assume you meant a static address on the net as opposed to an IP that is assigned to you by the ISP and which can change at anytime. There are sites that offer to make your address static (http://www.no-ip.org for example). They do that by giving you a program that sends your current IP to them whenever it changes. They have free and paid services that you can check out.

HTH

[ChiangMaiThai]

I'm not sure what you want a "real IP" for. I assume you meant a static address on the net as opposed to an IP that is assigned to you by the ISP and which can change at anytime. There are sites that offer to make your address static (http://www.no-ip.org for example). They do that by giving you a program that sends your current IP to them whenever it changes. They have free and paid services that you can check out.

HTH

Thanks for both responses kenk3z and rss. I want a 'real IP address' so that I am able to use Vonage (www.vonage.com).

My question now is when you pay these people to make your IP address stactic, are they the ones who decide which ports are open or is this still up to my ISP? I ask because CAT has teamed up with TT&T for TSpeed. CAT refuses to open the neccessary ports to make Vonage work because they don't want us making cheap, high quality long distance calls.

Is there any wau around this apart from switching ISP's?

[ChiangMaiThai]

I got a response back from no-ip.com. My ISP has to open the ports for them to be able to help.

Does anyone know how to persuade CAT to do this? Who do I pay and how much?

[rss]

That's too bad. There must be something unique about VoIP ports. They have a service that gets around port 25 (for mail servers) getting blocked by your ISP. I thought VoIP would be similar. You can search Google for other sites like no-ip that might be willing and able to do what you need.

[regpye]

You can get a static IP address for free by going to no-ip.com they will update your IP to what-ever you set it as, and that will be you fixed address.

I have been using this for IP phone connections for ages, never had a problem.

[autonomous_unit]

You can get a static IP address for free by going to no-ip.com they will update your IP to what-ever you set it as, and that will be you fixed address.

I have been using this for IP phone connections for ages, never had a problem.

Sorry, but this is not a correct description of no-ip.com's services. They provide a domain name service and some minimal forwarding services for people whose IP address changes periodically (when they reboot or the DHCP lease is revoked by their ISP). You have a public address that is not fixed, and no-ip gives you a human-friendly domain name that always maps to your current IP address.

ChiangMaiThai's problem is not dynamic addresses but rather private addressing behind a NAT system. At any given time, there is no IP address to which the remote caller's voice program can send data. He shares an address with god knows how many other customers of the same ISP, and giving them all a human-friendly name will not help the voice data get to his PC.

Sorry ChiangMaiThai, but as you have discovered there is no easy solution. Your best bet is probably to find a different ISP.

[PlanetMan]

That's too bad. There must be something unique about VoIP ports. They have a service that gets around port 25 (for mail servers) getting blocked by your ISP. I thought VoIP would be similar. You can search Google for other sites like no-ip that might be willing and able to do what you need.

CAT is the Thai government monopoly which provides all of us living in Thailand with incredibly high prices for international telephone calls and Internet Access (and the odd "Internet is offline" outage.)

VoIP allows telephone users to avoid high international telephone charges of the government monopoly, in essence providing folks like us a competing choice. Hard to imagine CAT (or any monopoly) would be very helpful in making this happen.

TIT

Cheers

[JJDinsay]

If VoIP is restricted by CAT then how come I read about all these VoIP companies popping up here and there? Also have a client who's doing another project for their trading floor where they plan to implement VoIP technology. How are they doing this if CAT is the sole connection out of Thailand? It shouldn't matter what ISP is providing the service no?